Estimates - Sport - Home of Football

Ms BURNET - Thank you, Chair. Minister, you mentioned that you had caught up with Tony Pignata at Wentworth Park the other day. Your latest Budget allocates $350,000 for a business case to plan an $80 million home of football at Wentworth Park, yet local associations like Central Region Junior Football Association, which manages over 4000 players alone, are telling us they are already operating past breaking point. Since grassroots competitions are forced to survive on a 'patchwork' - which is a very good term for it - a patchwork of school and council ovals with degraded, overused services, failing lights and delayed kick-off times - why is your government funding a centralised elite hub study instead of rolling out a distributed funding model to immediately upgrade the community pitches where young Tasmanians actually play every weekend?

Mr DUIGAN - What we're seeking to do is to do both things. I think we would recognise that football is a very important sport in the state of Tasmania. We have invested substantially into it over time, particularly ahead of the Women's World Cup, where there were a great many upgrades made to football facilities around the state in order to put us in a position to be able to host training teams.

We're also doing a lot of work around a statewide, more holistic, infrastructure planning piece, which I think has been somewhat absent of recent times, and perhaps, Brett, that might be one that you speak to about how we look at infrastructure in a more coherent, strategic manner going forward.

Ms BURNET - Because presumably you've done that with local councils. I know that the local councils down here, down in the south were looking at a coordinated approach to delivering those.

Mr DUIGAN - Well, often there'll be a council do a piece of work, but it's not connected to any other piece of work, so this is more a state-based holistic piece.

Mr STEWART - Thanks, minister. Just in relation to the funding for the feasibility study at Wentworth: my understanding is that that's also to consider community uses as well. It's not just for elite. It would be for the elite level, but, as with a lot of facilities that we see across the state, they do house both elite and various, sort of, cascading levels of community sport.

In relation to the more holistic piece that we're embarking on, there has been some really great work done by individual councils across the state and by groups of councils. What we're looking to do is take that work - some of which is actually very recent, the southern one's very recent - and provide a statewide strategic view on community infrastructure, sporting infrastructure, to effectively inform future investment decisions. That might be around where there could be gaps both regionally or by code, by court type or ground type. That work we will undertake over the next 12 months. It's funded in the Budget. We're very pleased that it was funded because we think we can take the work that's been done by those councils and enhance it by creating a statewide view.